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Information technology removes barriers
It's time to reevaluate the uses of information technology in education.
As someone who has spent his entire career working with information technology in education, I have seen many dashed hopes, disappointed faculty and administrators, and a lot of wasted money. Nonetheless, I am very optimistic about the potential for this technology.
My optimism comes from the ways in which information technology is evolving, the lessons that we in education have learned about the uses of technology, and, most noticeably to me, the effect technology has had on my children's education.
The other day, my daughter Julie, a fourth grader at our local public school, had her first-ever computer based home work assignment. Her class has been working on spreadsheets, learning what they are and how to use them for "what if" calculations. Her homework was to create her own "what if" problem and solve it using a spreadsheet. If we travel for four days and each of our four cats eats two cans of catfood a day, how many more cans does the cat sitter need besides the 19 cans we already have? What if the cats eat only 1 and 1/2 cans a day? What if we're away for only three days?
My son Chris is a junior in high school. Since junior high he has been composing all of his homework on a computer. Information for school reports is culled from CD-ROM encyclopedias and on-line sources on the Internet. This year he added of a new piece of technology to his arsenal -- in class his teacher demonstrates mathematical concepts using a graphing calculator, and Chris has his own for math homework.
My children's use of information technology is very different from mine when I was in school. My introduction to computers came as an engineering undergraduate, when I learned to program using punch cards and a large mainframe computer. It wasn't until graduate school, however, that I actually used a computer as a tool for my own research, and, even then, my use was occasional and only for special "computer-based" activities. Information technology was not a routine part of my educational experience.
As my children's experiences demonstrate, information technology has made substantial inroads in the learning environment -- but there has not been a radical alteration of the learning process. Technology is being incorporated in learning situations successfully, but its uses are very specific. This contrasts with the expectations of many academic institutions (both higher education and K-12) that saw potential in technology to change the ways of teaching and learning. No longer would the student be confined to the strict time requirements of a classroom environment -- now each student would have the luxury of learning at their own pace. No longer would all students have to learn the same material at the same time -- each could dictate their own learning pace and direction. This dream of a revolution in teaching and learning has not been realized.
What can we learn from this and what does it bode for the future uses of information technology in education? Drawing on my own experiences and those of my children I have come to a few conclusions:
Technology is successful when it is guided by pedagogy, not the other way around. The ways in which we teach and learn have not changed fundamentally for hundreds of years. The concept of a teacher and students, a class, and dialog about a particular topic remain at the core of our educational process. Written material as a source of information has been in regular use since back before the days of the printing press. Today's information technology is not going to radically change this system.
The teaching of writing is a good example of an appropriate use of information technology. I know of no computer program that, by itself, can teach writing. The learning process requires a dedicated teacher. However, we should not underestimate the value of a word processor in reviewing and revising written work. For instance, my daughter's third-grade teacher was successful instilling in her students the need to organize before writing, to create a first draft, to review this draft, and then to revise it. In using a word processor for her reports, Julie was able to write her outline, use this document to form the basis of her written first draft, and then enter all the revisions directly. Technology reinforced the lesson, it didn't replace it.
Technology's primary impact is as a communications mechanism. Many people have the tendency to think of information technology as a computational-intensive activity. While this was the case in the past, it is no longer true. The primary use of the technology is no longer to calculate answers for particular (mostly mathematically based) problems, but to store, organize, retrieve, and transmit information. While Julie's spreadsheet assignment is interesting, there are only so many "what if" computational problems that each of us face during any given day. The need to communicate, however, is ever-present.
The communication of thoughts, ideas, and concepts is the essence of the educational process. Fostering communication through information technology can fundamentally improve education and learning. We as teachers need to teach students how to learn throughout their entire life. If we provide them with the command of communications technology to support this learning, then we have taken an important step.
Perhaps the most intriguing source for future use of information technology lies in the fact that technology removes barriers. A computer does not care how slow you type. It does not care how late at night you start working. It does not care if it takes you seven revisions to get that final draft of your report.
Traditionally, time and distance constraints have limited course design. Much information technology is time and distant independent. Therefore, by taking advantage of this fact we can slip the bounds of some of our current constraints to excellent teaching and learning.
For instance, Lesley University has programs in 15 states. We teach every day of the week, during daytime and evening hours, and hold classes in at least four different time zones. Sharing information and experiences among the entire Lesley community is, therefore, a formidable challenge. Information technology can help us master this challenge. The new Lesley University network, for example, will soon allow the University to deliver such critical information as the library catalog and full access to source-rich databases to all of our students, whether they are in a dormitory room on campus, sitting at home in Denver, or in the Ludcke Library itself.
Lesley University has long been an innovator in the delivery of education. Provided we learn the lessons of the past and apply information technology appropriately, I believe that we will continue to build on this strength. The technology will not change the institution, nor what we do. It will, however, let us do what we already do better.
Jeff Seaman is executive director of Lesley's Office of Information Technology.
